Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Prospecting is the first step in our selling cycle. The next step is to make the telephone calls to our prospects. A lot of time, prospecting calls are screened by the operators, receptionists or the secretaries before the calls are connected to the rightful receivers. The more higher status of a prospect, the more difficult the approaches for the sales agents. Selling can be make easy, if only there are prospects to be seen. Many sales agents give up their career merely because they could not overcome the technique of making successful telephone calls.

To bypass a professional secretary whose responsibility is to screen unnecessary calls for her boss, an agent has to speak effectively and confidently with her. The secret of these successful calls is to speak like a friend to the secretaries, and not sound formal to her.

Lets say the boss' name is John Lee Chin Ming and you intend to ask permission to speak with him. The formal way to address the boss is to call him Mr John Lee or Mr Lee Chin Ming, which sounds like you have not known the boss yet. Given the opportunity for me to make this call, i would speak in this manner to his scretary. "Hi my dear! May i speak with John?" or "Hi girl! Is Chin Ming in the office? If she asks, "Who is that please?" I would reply, "Tell him is Robert here".

The John or Chin Ming and Robert sounded more casual to her. And usually secretaries are afraid to offend the boss' friends or his buddies. With confidence, a lighter tune of voice and some humour, i never fail to connect all my calls to whoever i intend to approach. May be one day, i might even make a call to the President of America to see my luck.

Do you know - "The bathtub was invented in 1850 and the telephone in 1875. In other words, if you had been living in 1850, you could have sat in the bathtub for 25 years without having to answer the phone" ~Bill DeWitt, 1972